— Cooper Hewitt Reopens: This Friday, following a massive renovation that took $91 million and three years to complete, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum will reopen with 60 percent more gallery space and a series of high-tech interactive programs. “My days have been bifurcated between an ambitious renovation of a 19th-century building and a complete rethinking of who we want to be as the only historic and contemporary design museum in the US,” said Cooper Hewitt director Caroline Baumann. Among the innovations set to debut is “the Pen,” a technology designed by Local Projects with Diller Scofidio + Renfro and sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies, which visitors can take through the museum, controlling projections on new wall-sized screens and scanning works to create their own virtual collection that they can access later online. [TAN, ARTnews]

— Ferguson Museums Preserve Protest Art: Artists in Ferguson, Missouri have been painting uplifting murals on the plywood that covers damage done to local businesses in the wake of the grand jury’s failure to indict Darren Wilson — and now, the Missouri History Museum and Regional Art Commission are trying to preserve some of that art, possibly for a future exhibition. Still, not everyone in Ferguson is thrilled with the idea: “It’s not the history you’d want to remember,” said local business owner Varun Madaksira, whose restaurant burned in the post-verdict protests, while activist Tony Rice asserted, “It’s an attempt to whitewash the pain the community has suffered.” [Columbia Missourian]

— Helly Nahmad Leaves Jail Early: Though the art dealer was sentenced to a year in prison for running an illegal gambling operation from his apartment in Trump Tower, he was released to a Bronx halfway house after only five months in jail. [Observer]

— National Gallery Names First Female Chair: Documentarian Hannah Rothschild will take over the British institution when Mark Getty ends his term next August. [Guardian]

— Detroit Case Raises Lasting Questions: The fraught decision over the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection in light of the city’s bankruptcy introduces some precedent for considering “whether the value of artwork is excepted from cold-calculated monetization of assets for the benefit of creditors and whether the value of an asset can be entwined with issues larger than money, such as pride, history, and culture,” writes Above the Law’s Madeleine Giansanti Cag. Meanwhile, the museum is doing its best to raise the steep $350 million contribution asked of it by the court. [Above the Law, Bloomberg]

— Art is Basically Like Chipotle: Marion Maneker draws a parallel between the current path of the high-end art market and the recent popularizing of high-end fast food (e.g., the rise of Chipotle over McDonalds), asserting that art should follow food’s path in “taking once abstruse and artisanal products and making them common fare.” [Quartz]

— Eighteen Italian artists — including Enzo Cucchi, Mimmo Paladino, Giuseppe Penone, and Gaetano Pesce — will help design a soup kitchen that will open alongside the Milan Expo in 2015. [TAN]

— The MFA Boston has awarded its 2015 Maud Morgan Prize to Marilyn Arsem, marking the first time the $10,000 award has ever been given to a performance artist. [Press release]

— In the wake of No-Shave November, London’s Somerset House is hosting a photo exhibition dedicated to beards. [Guardian]

ALSO ON ARTINFO

Blouin Art + Auction’s Power Game Changers 2014

Playing by the Rules at the Shanghai Biennale

The Past Is Present in Göran Olsson’s “Concerning Violence”

Man Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for Punching a Monet

Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

Freak shows are inherently theatrical. That may well account for why stages in New York and London are replete with characters who invite us to gawk at their deformities, mental or physical. A certain satisfaction, if not relief, stems from the fact that we’re not like them even as they force us to consider that we may have more similarities than we’d care to acknowledge. 

This season hosts a panoply of irregularity, including the grotesquely disfigured hero in “The Elephant Man”; the conjoined twins in the musical “Side Show”; Victor Hugo’s misshapen bell ringer in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”; and the loony shooters at presidents of the United States in “Assassins.” The first two are on Broadway, the latter two in San Diego and London, respectively.

“The Elephant Man,” already one of the hottest tickets of the Broadway season, recently opened to strongly positive notices, especially for Bradley Cooper in the title role and for his co-stars Alessandro Nivola, as the doctor who saves him from a side show, and Patricia Clarkson, who introduces him to Victorian society. The critics noted the obvious irony of a man dubbed “The Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine playing one of the most hideously deformed creatures in history.

But while a slideshow at the beginning of the play shows the repulsiveness of John Merrick’s physical condition — part of a lecture by Nivola’s Dr. Frederick Treves — Cooper is called upon to mimic it simply by assuming contortions of physique and face which turn his voice alternatively into beastly howls or high-pitched, halting speech. For much of the show, directed with elegant simplicity by Scott Ellis, the audience is allowed to gaze — or gawk — at a beautiful man displaying the intuitive intelligence of a character who puts all those around him to shame.

This is not a salve afforded the audiences in the musical “Side Show,” which is a much bolder and in your face retelling of the sad saga of the British-born Hilton Sisters — Violet and Daisy — conjoined twins who were at one time the highest paid entertainers in American vaudeville. Director Bill Condon has evoked the grimy world of the sideshow in all its tatty glory, choosing to realistically depict the women’s freakish compatriots — the Dog-faced Boy, the Reptile Man, and the large-headed Gawky Geek — through the makeup and special effects artistry of Dave Elsey, who won an Oscar for “Wolfman,” and his wife, Lou.

While “Side Show” has its passionate partisans and earned almost across-the-board raves, the show has been struggling at the box-office since it opened last month. Even though “being a freak is virtually the new normal” — as Charles Isherwood put it in his New York Times review— audiences have so far found this audacious and beautiful musical to be resistible. Apparently, the impulse to identify with nature’s mutants only goes so far. The biggest stumbling block lies in the romantic entanglements of the women, which is the motor of the play. It’s hard to wrap one’s mind around the usual intimacies for one of the couples because, well, she’s always going to be there.

Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins,” which consistently earns positive reviews from critics, including its latest incarnation at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, has also met with the same kind of resistance from audiences. A 2004 Broadway production at Roundabout’s Studio 54 won six Tony Awards, including Best Revival, and only managed to eke out a three-month run.    

Sondheim has said that, of all his musicals, “Assassins” is the one work that comes closest to achieving all that he and his librettist, John Weidman, set out to do. The Dean of American musical theater also rankles whenever anybody suggests that the show “glorifies” those who have tried to settle grudges, win fame, or impress a loved one by killing the president of the United States.

“Assassins,” positing that one of America’s highest values is “the pursuit of happiness,” tracks the deviations that occur when the dreams curdle for those who are deranged or mentally unbalanced.  As in “Side Show,” with its hapless denizens, audiences have found it difficult to claim these crackpots as our own, despite the utterly seductive nature of Sondheim’s songs, from the jaunty “Everybody’s Got the Right (to Be Happy)” to “Unworthy of Your Love” — a duet between would-be assassins John Hinckley and Lynette Fromme to their respective obsessions, Jodie Foster and Charles Manson.

On the other hand, “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which is currently in a world premiere engagement at La Jolla Playhouse, is an audience pleaser — at least judging by the enthusiastic response of the audience at a recent matinee performance. Here, Quasimodo the Hunchback, well played by a pleasant-looking Michael Arden, is transformed into his character in full view of the audience, strapped into his hump, his features distorted by slashes of makeup and, as in “The Elephant Man,” his twisted physique making him move with an uneven gait. 

Based on the Disney animated film, the musical, directed by Scott Schwartz, features a stunning score by the powerhouse team of Alan Menken (“Beauty and the Beast”) and Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”).  Creating a stunning soundscape — against the backdrop of a row of giant bells designed by Alexander Dodge — is the inspired addition of the 32-strong Sacra/Profana choir, which gives sacred heft to the soaring ballads, anthems, and hymns. Moreover, the score nicely showcases the vocal power of Patrick Page in a bravura performance as Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame and Quasimodo’s guardian, who is tortured by his desire for the gypsy Esmeralda.

Despite the reverence shown toward Victor Hugo’s timeless classic — and the fact that a cleric’s lust propels much of the action — the show’s cartoon roots are still showing. The pathetic travails of Quasimodo, who also pines for the gypsy Esmeralda, though platonically, are interrupted with scenes of singing and dancing townsfolk straight out the standard Broadway playbook. In an attempt to marry the gravity of “Les Miserables” with the levity of “Beauty and the Beast,” the show ends up undercutting its emotional power.  

With a subplot of a romance between Esmeralda and a handsome young Captain Phoebus, the musical is also a mash-up of “Phantom of the Opera,” “Man of La Mancha,” and Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” Those aren’t bad shows with which to be compared, and “Hunchback” has the potential to be a hit.  

Like John Merrick and Violet and Daisy Hilton, Quasimodo poignantly desires to experience the “heavenly light” of love. And in that, we can all identify.  

It looks as if television has finally discovered the treasure that is American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. This year, two shows based on the visionary author’s works will premiere on television. While the concept of “Minority Report” has already been revealed to the world by Steven Spielberg in his 2002 hit film starring Tom Cruise, a crime drama on the Fox network hopes to explore the idea further in long format. Spielberg continues to serve as executive producer of this television venture, along with “Godzilla” (2014) director Max Borenstein, who is also penning the project.

Set in the future, it follows the premise that 15 years after the shutdown of the ‘PreCrime’ division (by the shenanigans of Tom Cruise and company) in 2050, one of the three ‘Precognitives’ or Precogs continues to be haunted by visions of future crimes and decides to stop them before they happen with the aid of a police detective. It stars Stark Sands (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) as Dash, one of the ‘Precog’ twin brothers; Meagan Good (“Californication”) as police detective Lara Vega; Laura Regan (“Mad Men”) as Agatha, the ‘Precog’ older sister who was one of the central characters in the film; and Wilmer Valderrama (“That ’70s Show”) as police detective Will Blake.

The idea for the film and television series has been adapted from a Philip K. Dick short story that was published in a science fiction magazine in 1956. Three mutant siblings have the ability to see crimes before they happen, and so they are plugged into a machine that taps their visions and enables a special police force to nab these potential criminals before they can act. The American writer, who published 44 novels and around 121 short stories in his lifetime, often dwelled on the themes of authoritarianism, altered states of consciousness and free will, as in this story. “Minority Report”, at least the film version, questions the existence of free will. However, the television series looks like it’s getting ready to brush under the carpet the moral of the (film’s) story, but let’s not preempt the judgment.

The pilot episode was leaked earlier this month, and caused great controversy, but the show is set to premiere on September 21, 2015.

The other series that is coming to television in November, and is based on a 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick is “The Man in the High Castle”. An Amazon Studios production, its pilot double-episode debuted at a special Comic Con event in January this year, and was later livestreamed for public viewing. The pilot was exceptionally well received by both critics and fans, and the project subsequently got the green light.

“The Man in the High Castle” is an alternate history novel that won the 1963 Hugo Award, and draws inspiration from the influential Chinese classic “I Ching”. It re-imagines the year 1962 in a world where the Allies have lost the Second World War, and the Axis powers of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany rule over their pockets of the former U.S.A. The pilot episode remained close to the original story, and the show is in experienced hands under the helm of director Frank Spotnitz (“The X Files”) and executive producer Ridley Scott, who is no stranger to the work of Philip K. Dick having adapted his 1982 cult hit “Blade Runner” from the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Starring Alexa Davalos (“Mob City”), Rufus Sewell (“John Adams”), Luke Kleintank (“Pretty Little Liars”) and Rupert Evans (“Hellboy”), the pilot episodes introduced the character of Juliana Crain who comes into possession of banned newsreels titled “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” said to be created by a mysterious man in the high castle, and are required by the Resistance to be delivered to another city. The reality that Juliana and other characters in the story inhabit is dictated by fear and oppression under the totalitarian rule of Fascist and Imperialistic forces. The U.S. comprises of three sections; the Greater Nazi Reich on the East Coast, the Japanese controlling the West Coast and a neutral zone in the middle. There are firing squads and execution chambers, citizens wear swastika armbands, Jewish people are prosecuted, Nazi and Japanese insignia in public places, some art is contraband, and members of the Resistance operate under the radar. Also, drinking tea and learning martial arts are common activities (on brighter days).

As is apparent in the trailer, the show promises a high production value as it requires a convincing visual recreation of an alternate world, with contextually correct fashion, hairstyles, architecture, lifestyle and the type of automobiles and technology that would seep into society if Japan or Germany were in power.

Some of the other works by Philip K. Dick that have been adapted for screen are “Total Recall”, “A Scanner Darkly” and “The Adjustment Bureau”. His 1969 dystopian novel “Ubik”, which was hailed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 greatest English language novels, was at one point picked up by director Michel Gondry for a possible film adaptation.

The ten-episode first season of “The Man in the High Castle” premieres on November 20, 2015, on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video.

Follow @ARTINFOIndia

A colossal sculpture by renowned Mexican artist Rivelino will be unveiled on King Charles Island in London’s Trafalgar Square on August 28. It is the first of four sculptures by contemporary Mexican artists to be unveiled across London this September as part of an exhibition coinciding with the celebratory Dual Year of UK and Mexico 2015.

Titled “You,” Rivelino’s 25-tonne, 14.5 metre long sculpture comprises two identical index fingers pointing towards each other, creating an in-between space of inclusivity. “In a world that is self-evidently unequal, ‘You’ calls upon viewers to question their attitude towards the highly significant issue of equality between human beings,” Rivelino explained.

“Contemporary Mexican Sculpture: The Vision of Four Artists” is an exhibition of new large-scale sculptures in volcanic stone, bronze, and resin by the celebrated sculptors Yvonne Domenge (b.1946), Jorge Yazpik (b.1955), Paloma Torres (b. 1960), and José Rivelino (b.1973), who together represent four successive generations of Mexican artists.

The exhibition is the first collective presentation of large-scale Mexican sculpture to be held in London’s public spaces and is the result of a collaboration between Nuri Contreras Martret, Director of Art4, Latin American Art specialist Katrinka Wood, and the Mexican Embassy in the UK, with the support of the artists, Art4, and Lodgeo (lodgeo.com).

On Thursday evening, Agathe Snow sat on the curved ledge outside the Guggenheim Museum, swinging her white sandal-clad feet, wearing no makeup and a tunic that, apocryphal or not, had been owned by Janis Joplin. It was a gift from her late ex-husband, the artist Dash Snow — one of the 365 guests at the 24-hour filmed dance marathon at 49 Ann Street in 2005. (Dash was also one of a handful of friends who would later die of an overdose.) Ten years later, the film premiered last night at a dance party hosted at the museum as part of the exhibition “Storylines,” and continues through 6:30pm tonight.

“The emotions come and go,” Snow said of editing “Stamina.” “But whenever I see friends — the fact that we are here together now…” she trailed off as one old friend came up to greet her. Throughout our 15-minute conversation, a stream of these aggressively hip well wishers stopped to hug and kiss the 39-year-old, who is best known for her avant-garde social art works and impromptu dinner parties put on in the 2000s.

“We were always together,” Snow said of the downtown crew that included Ryan McGinley and Dan Colen, along with Dash. “It was a big group of people with a lot of energy. And then we got so much attention after 9/11, some of us started to have careers. We started separating. At some point, we had to grow up.”

The 2005 party in the house of her former ecstasy dealer was a kind of last hurrah to the Dionysian, doped up days of their early and mid 20s. “On a Sunday evening in November, we put aside our budding adulthood for a full 24 hours, nine cameras covering all the action, all the gritty details, the live music, the outfits, the changes, the kissing and the fights, all bathed in flashing, throbbing, pulsing technicolor,” Snow stated in the press release for the Guggenheim screening.

Inside the museum, the film plays on a seven-split screen above a neon-lit checkered dance floor, where faces from the original party mingled with a younger generation. One older guest wore a red silk nightgown and sleeping mask across her forehead, with a toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste sticking out like decorative plumes. Others in the crowd danced to live rock and punk, and it was clear that some glory days were being relived. But there were also signs that the scensters from the early aughts had grown up and moved on. Snow’s 5-year-old son bounced around inside, while a young girl launched herself on the pillows decorating the foyer.   

In the film, at around 6 in the morning, the cameramen ask the guests for one word to describe this moment. Already then, people were saying “nostalgic,” Snow said.  

The film screening continues until 6:30pm on Friday, August 21. 

If you know one thing about John Singer Sargent, it is probably his portraits. The artist made a name for himself as a painter of high society characters — beginning in Paris, where he started his career in the 1870s, through his rise to prominence before the turn of the century. But in “Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends,” now on view at the Met through October 4, we get a chance to see beyond the artist’s commissions to his passion projects — paintings of his close friends and artistic contemporaries, including Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Henry James, even a young William Butler Yeats, and many more. The exhibition, which originated at the National Portrait Gallery in London, expanded by 20 works from the Met’s collection when it moved to the American museum. ARTINFO spoke with Met co-curators Stephanie Herdrich and Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser to learn about this new side of Sargent.

How did the idea for this show come about?

Stephanie Herdrich: The specific story of how the show came about, actually, starts at the National Portrait Gallery in London with Richard Ormond, who is a descendent of Sargent’s and also the main author of the Sargent catalogue raisonné, and he also used to work at the National Portrait Gallery. He was talking to the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sandy Nairne, about one of the portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sandy Nairne said, “I love this painting, we should do a show around this painting,” and told Richard to think about it. Richard came up with this idea of Sargent’s artistic circle and his friends, Sargent’s portraits of the artists.

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser: [The portrait of Stevenson] was so eccentric, with him seemingly walking out of the space and the dark, mysterious doorway between Stevenson and his wife, who is cut off on the right hand side. It’s typical of how, because Sargent knows these people so well, he can get at their essence. Stevenson was evidently a very wired person and sort of always talking to himself, so [Sargent] just captures him at that familiar moment that I’m sure he had witnessed many times.

Herdrich: With these creative types, Sargent feels he can take more risks. This is so unconventional. You wouldn’t do that necessarily for some society matron — but Stevenson and his wife loved the portrait.

Kornhauser: Sargent had the confidence to know that they would understand what he was doing.

Do you also notice a stylistic freedom in other noncommissioned works?

Herdrich: Madame Gautreau — the famous “Madame X” — was a noncommissioned work, someone that Sargent was fascinated with. We know that the sitter liked the portrait, but when it was displayed in Paris, people thought it was really unflattering and that she looked decomposed and dead. It really gave Sargent a reputation for creating eccentric portraits. Then, if we look at some of his more informal portraits, which are just quickly dashed off, I think you see his brushwork is so free and expressive.

There were several occasions in the late 1880s, early 1890s where he sees these wonderful performers and then approaches them and asks to paint them. Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry, the Spanish dancer Carmencita — again, a noncommissioned work. In this period, the status of actors and performers is really changing. Earlier, they were seen as common, rough characters; high society people wouldn’t go to these performances. Sargent’s portraits really elevate them. This is the scale of a portrait of an aristocrat or royalty; this would’ve been shown at an exhibition alongside portraits of aristocrats. There were people who criticized the portrait [of Carmencita], I really think because she was a common performer, and they weren’t used to seeing that kind of character on such a grand scale. And her attitude is a little almost haughty. I think that’s in there, these kind of classist notions.

Do you think that was deliberate — that he was trying to flout people’s sensibilities?

Herdrich: I think he painted what fascinated him. I don’t think he was trying to be provocative, but I do think he was naturally drawn to fascinating people, to bold personalities. It’s interesting to think that he’s often described as kind of shy and retiring and awkward, but if you look at the people he sought out to paint, he was attracted to the exact opposite — people who performed boldly onstage, people who lived on the fringes of society.

He was born to American parents in Europe — they just moved seasonally — and I think the constant meeting of new people and ability to blend in and observe comes partly from that background. His parents encouraged him — took him to every museum, every monument, so he was constantly expanding his horizons.

Even if he spent most of his career in Europe, he always considered himself an American and really worked hard and steadily to build his career here. Isabella Stuart Gardner, for example, was one of his most important patrons — we’re thrilled to have that portrait here from the Gardner Museum.

Kornhauser: We learned that this is the first time it’s left Boston. The museum director, Anne Hawley, felt that because of Gardner’s deep Manhattan roots, it was very appropriate to reunite her with this community of friends and people that she admired. And especially Sargent — their relationship was very personal.

Herdrich: Though it is a commissioned piece, it’s sort of a perfect example of a progressive patron conspiring with Sargent to create an unusual portrait. She had admired the painting of Madame Gautreau and wanted something equally evocative. The resulting portrait, I think, really defies conventional, traditional portraiture in the period. She has this bizarre brocade background that makes her look like a haloed icon, and viewers thought her expression was sort of mysterious. She wasn’t known as a great beauty, and I don’t think Sargent is going for all-out flattery. He’s really focusing on her formidable personality.

In addition to the portraits, there’s also a lot of landscape work on view.

Kornhauser: While he spent considerable time in Boston and New York, where his patrons, his close friends were located, he also got as far as Florida and Maine — which is an important point to make, that he got out of the major cities. You begin to see an interest in landscape as he turns away from the formal portrait commissions.

Herdrich: He always actually did like to paint landscapes, but then he really gets tired of painting portraits and focuses more on outdoor and landscape scenes, sometimes combining it with portraiture. After 1900, he’s really moving away from formal portraiture, and in 1907, he makes a formal declaration saying he’s no longer going to do commissioned portraits. He spends his time painting murals in Boston for the MFA and the public library, but then increasingly returning to this pattern of traveling, painting out of doors.

In the last gallery, you see these images of his traveling companions, often artists at work or relaxing. Also in this gallery, you see a lot of images of artists painting, and we really feel that these are self-portraits — showing the creation of art through his eyes.

Kornhauser: That title — “An Artist in His Studio.” You start to imagine what Sargent’s own life might have been like. I think it’s a very revealing painting.

And that element of “a painting within a painting” — trying to differentiate the painted person from the painted canvas-within-a-canvas — is more complex than straight portraiture.

Herdrich: People want to dismiss Sargent as being kind of superficial or too fluid or too easy, but this is really a thoughtful painting — it contains layers and layers about the creation of art.

Kornhauser: I think most of the paintings in this gallery show his modern inclinations, the way he crops it down so tightly, and the perspective is extraordinary. The bed linens catching the light…

It’s almost like, even though he’s not doing paintings of high society women in gowns anymore, he found a way to include that folded fabric.

Herdrich: Well, he had costumes that he traveled with that would make his friends pose for him, and that pale blue skirt [in “In a Garden, Corfu,” 1909] is one of them.

Kornhauser: I think the biggest lesson that people should take away is that you actually get to know Sargent as a person through seeing these paintings. In the past, he was just presented as kind of mysterious, very shy, very retiring man.

What is it about Sargent, do you think, that we get to know through this show?

Herdrich: He’s so well known as a portraitist to high society — and those types of portraits, I don’t feel, represent him fully as a person. So by peeling away that layer and looking at the people he was friends with and how he paints them, I think that gives us not only insight into who he was, but just a broader view of him as an artist and what was important to him and what he was passionate about.

The Met has one of the largest collections of works by Sargent in the world — over 300 drawings and watercolors. And most of them came from the leftovers of the artist’s estate, so they were works that were mostly never exhibited in his lifetime. We wanted to use this opportunity, not only to highlight that aspect of our collection, but to look at some of the subjects that captivated him when he was kind of off duty — what he painted when he was painting for his own pleasure. Focusing also on the fluidity of his technique, the spontaneity of it, the ease.

Kornhauser: He’s always hovering in these paintings. You know he’s right there, painting this scene. It’s human nature, I think, to want to know more about people who keep themselves apart.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) have jointly acquired Lorenzo Bartolini’s circa 1821 marble sculpture “The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz,” ensuring that the exceptional work will remain in the United Kingdom on public display. Subject to a temporary export bar in 2014, the sculpture was purchased for £523,800.

“The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz,” which shows two full-length, life-size women in graceful movement, will go on show for the first time at the V&A in London this week where it will remain until November 20, 2015. It will then return to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh where it will be on display until 2020.

Beth McKillop, Deputy Director and Director of Collections at the V&A, said, “We are excited that we have the opportunity to display The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz at the V&A. Bartolini’s sculpture is a delightful work and an outstanding addition to the national collection of sculpture housed at the Museum.”

Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, added, “We are thrilled that Bartolini’s masterpiece, which was sculpted in Florence and depicts two Scottish sitters, can continue to be seen in Scotland. For nearly two centuries it was on view in Inveraray Castle, Argyll, and most recently in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Now it will return to the Gallery, where it links beautifully to many other great works of art in the national collection.”

Since it was launched in 2010, photo sharing app Instagram has become one of the art world’s most influential platforms for social networking and marketing. Instagram has infiltrated every sector of the global art scene and has been embraced by everyone from artists to curators to gallerists.

This week Instagram takes another leap into the cultural sphere with the launch of an innovative curatorial exchange between ten London museums who are joining forces to celebrate their collections on Instagram using the hashtag #MuseumInstaSwap.

As the hashtag suggests, the #MuseumInstaSwap collaboration was a challenge to each of the ten participating museums to discover and photograph objects in a completely different museum that resonate with their own collections and themes.

The museums taking part are: The British Museum, Design Museum, V&A, Science Museum, Wellcome Collection, Natural History Museum, Horniman Museum and Gardens, Imperial War Museums, London Transport Museum, and The Royal Museums Greenwich.

After being sorted into pairs by pulling names out of a hat, the museum pairs visited each other to find and photograph objects for the project. Each museum will tell the story of their journey of discovery through the photos and captions they post on Instagram this week.

The #MuseumInstaSwap project is being championed by the Wellcome Collection and was inspired by a post on the Londonist website listing the ten best London museums to follow on Instagram based on the number of followers.

You can follow #MuseumInstaSwap on Instagram to discover what these museums found in each other’s collections.

The museums and their pairings

Horniman Museum and Gardens + Royal Museums Greenwich

Science Museum + Design Museum

London Transport Museum + Wellcome Collection

Imperial War Museum + British Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum + Natural History Museum